Meal Planner MCP

A self-contained MCP server that plans a week of meals from a local recipe library — optimizing for shared ingredients, reusing leftovers, and avoiding recent repeats — then generates a consolidated shopping list and a Markdown plan you can stick on the fridge.

No cloud, no API keys, no database. Clone it and it runs.

python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate    # isolate deps
pip install -e ".[test]" && pytest -q                 # 76 tests
python -m mealplanner.cli plan --days 7               # try the planner
python -m mealplanner.cli shopping                    # and the shopping list

Example

It ships with a seed library, so it plans the moment you clone it — no data entry. The planner optimizes for ingredient overlap across the week, then consolidates everything into one deduplicated shopping list:

$ python -m mealplanner.cli plan --days 5

Plan for 5 days (household 4):

  2026-06-05   Veggie Fried Rice  (serves 4)
  2026-06-06   Chicken Stir-Fry  (serves 4)
  2026-06-07   Sheet-Pan Chicken & Peppers  (serves 4)
  2026-06-08   Poached Eggs in Tomato Sauce  (serves 4)
  2026-06-09   Chickpea & Spinach Stew  (serves 4)

$ python -m mealplanner.cli shopping

Shopping list:

  [ ] 5  bell pepper
  [ ] 2 can  canned tomato
  [ ] 2 pound  chicken breast
  [ ] 11 clove  garlic
  [ ] 6 tablespoon  soy sauce
  …

The MCP tools run the same logic — plan_week then generate_shopping_list — so in Claude Desktop you just ask for it in plain language.

In Claude Desktop

Wired in as a local MCP server, Claude discovers the tools and drives them from a plain-language ask — here it picks up plan_week, calls it with days: 5, then explains the result and offers next steps:

Why an MCP (and not just asking Claude)?

A tool only earns its place if it does something the model can't. This one clears that bar on four counts — which is the whole reason it exists:

Ask	Plain Claude	This server
"Suggest a sci-fi… er, a pasta dish"	✅ fine on its own	(a tool adds nothing)
"Plan around my recipes"	❌ doesn't know them	✅ grounded in your local library
"Don't repeat what we ate last week"	❌ no memory across chats	✅ persistent history file
"Give me a plan + list I can keep"	❌ can't write files	✅ Markdown export
"Merge 1 + 2 + ½ onion across 4 recipes, scaled to 6"	❌ hand-waves the math	✅ exact, deterministic

The model does the creative part (which week feels good); the server supplies the private data, the memory, the persisted artifact, and the exact arithmetic.

What it does

• plan_week — greedy optimizer: picks recipes that share the most ingredients with what's already chosen, skips anything cooked recently, and fills extra nights from serving-surplus leftovers (a batch of chili that serves 8 covers two dinners for a family of four). The overlap objective rewards similar recipes, so it clusters same-protein nights by design; diversity_weight (off by default) dials in variety vs. waste.
• swap_meal / remove_meal — iterate per day: "put tacos on Tuesday," "skip Thursday." The plan, shopping list, and export all update with you. ("Make Friday quicker" needs no new tool — Claude calls suggest_recipes then swap_meal.)
• generate_shopping_list — merges and scales ingredients across the plan's cook days, deduped, with no silent unit conversion.
• export_plan — writes the week + shopping list and returns it inline (so a remote caller who can't read the server's disk still gets it). format="markdown" (table + checklist, renders in Claude and note apps) or "text" (plain text for pasting into Notes / Reminders). With no path it writes to a known location under the data dir (not the process cwd, which is unpredictable when Claude Desktop launches the server).
• set_course — recategorize a recipe (mark a stray import as a Sauce so it stops landing in dinner slots). Curation; the planner relies on this normalized field, never on title guessing.
• suggest_recipes / list_recipes / get_recipe — query the library.
• record_cooked — log what you actually made; this is the memory that powers avoid-repeats.
• add_recipe — save one recipe from free text. The everyday way to build your library — no file or format needed.
• add_recipes — bulk-add a whole batch in one call: the fast way to build a starter library with no Plan to Eat export. Generate a batch from your tastes, review it, and save them all at once (Claude generates; the tool just persists).
• import_recipes — optional bulk shortcut for an existing Plan to Eat export: by csv_path (a file on the server — local use) or csv_content (pasted CSV text — works for a remote caller with no server-disk access). Offline, no scraping.

Seeding your library

Four ways, none requiring any particular app or format:

1. Just start — 16 recipes ship in data/recipes.seed.json, so it plans a week the moment you clone it.
2. Add as you go (the normal path) — paste or describe a recipe in chat; Claude structures it and calls add_recipe. "Save my chili: 2 lb ground beef, an onion, 2 cans tomatoes, kidney beans, chili powder — serves 8." No CSV, no schema.
3. Generate a starter set (no export needed) — don't want to add them one by one? Ask Claude to generate a batch from your tastes — "25 quick weeknight dinners I'd like, mostly vegetarian" — review it, and it saves them all in one add_recipes call. The planner optimizes over recipes you'll actually cook, so keep the batch to food you'd really make rather than generic filler.
4. Bulk migrate (optional) — already have a Plan to Eat export? import_recipes loads it in one offline pass. It's a convenience, not a requirement — and adding other formats (Paprika, Mealie, plain JSON) is a documented seam.

Architecture

Pure core + thin adapters. All the logic is I/O-free and unit-tested without a runtime; the MCP server and the CLI are two adapters over the same functions, and one module does all the file I/O.

src/mealplanner/
  models.py       Recipe · Ingredient · HistoryEntry · PlanDay
  ingredients.py  parse free text → {qty,unit,item} · canonicalize · aggregate   (pure)
  core.py         library search · overlap scoring · avoid-repeats               (pure)
  planner.py      greedy week optimizer (overlap + leftovers + avoid-repeats)    (pure)
  exports.py      shopping-list build · Markdown render                          (pure)
  store.py        JSON persistence · Plan to Eat CSV import          (the only I/O)
  server.py       MCP adapter (FastMCP)
  cli.py          CLI adapter
data/recipes.seed.json   bundled starter library (clones-and-runs)

The bundled seed ships in the repo; your mutable state (history, plans, imported recipes) lives in a gitignored state.json under ~/.meal-planner/ — so your real recipes never land in a commit.

Use it from Claude

The server runs over two transports from one codebase — stdio for a local Claude Desktop subprocess, or streamable-HTTP so it can be added as a remote custom connector by URL.

Local (stdio) — Claude Desktop. Clone, make a virtualenv, and install — the install puts a meal-planner console script inside .venv/bin:

git clone https://github.com/illinigirl/meal-planner-mcp
cd meal-planner-mcp
python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

Then point your claude_desktop_config.json at that script (absolute path), and restart Claude Desktop — the meal-planner tools will appear:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "meal-planner": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/meal-planner-mcp/.venv/bin/meal-planner"
    }
  }
}

As a custom connector (HTTP). Run it as an HTTP server and point a connector at the URL:

meal-planner --http --port 8765          # or MEAL_PLANNER_HTTP=1
# then add http://localhost:8765/mcp as a custom connector

(For a remote connector — claude.ai / mobile — host it behind a public HTTPS URL with auth, the same way a production MCP deployment would.)

Then just talk: "Plan us 7 dinners this week, nothing we had recently, keep weeknights under 30 minutes — then give me the shopping list." — and iterate: "swap Tuesday for something vegetarian," "skip Thursday."

For reviewers — drive it with Claude Code

It's built to be worked in by an agent. Good first tasks, easiest first:

1. Run the tests — pip install -e ".[test]" && python -m pytest -q (75; the pure-core subset runs on stdlib alone, the tool-layer tests use the MCP SDK).
2. Improve the ingredient parser to handle 1 (14 oz) can tomatoes — see ingredients.parse_ingredient and add a test.
3. Add leftover mode B (cook-once-eat-twice): give recipes produces/uses tags so roast chicken → chicken soup chains. The seed already has both recipes waiting.
4. Add an explicit unit-conversion table (3 tsp → 1 tbsp) — but only convert when asked, never silently.

CLAUDE.md is the orientation file: architecture, conventions, design rationale, and every deliberate simplification (each one a place to extend).

License

MIT.